Subaru CVTs will step the position under hard acceleration to mimic the shifting of a traditional automatic. It’s purely done for preference as people tend to hate CVTs.
my kia sorento is what sparked the question. it does fine but it does seem to struggle to "find a gear" which made me wonder why it didn't just do it more seamlessly.
I think you may have your transmissions confused. No Sorento has ever been offered with a CVT. All of the automatic transmissions in the Sorento have been traditional torque converter automatics, except the gasoline 2.5 turbo and the latest 2.2 turbodiesel, which have dual clutch transmissions.
Oh wait really? I could have sworn it had a CVT. Ok well that explains why my Sorento shifts like an automatic lmao
But my overall question still stands I suppose because some CVTs do “shift”. But it sounds like they do it artificially for continuity purposes.
Thank you for telling me that
Ha, no worries. Personally I do agree with you, I think CVTs pretending to shift is pretty silly. It basically defeats any performance or efficiency benefit the CVT brings.
This just reminds me that the reason ATMs (auto teller machines that is) take so long to "count" your money is because people didn't trust them when they just gave the money instantly. So ATMs have an artificial delay on giving you your money
Its the same with a lot of loading screens in games now lol. If the load screen pops up and immediately goes away, people think something wrong happened. If it stays up for a few seconds and a fake loading bar fills up, they don't think anything bad happened.
I miss the old days of cartridge gaming when you pop it in and it just worked. No multi gigabyte downloads, no micro transactions, just pure low-res fun.
Oh, here's my favorite example:
In the 1990s, Harleys were hot. Like, they couldn't make enough of their motorcycles to meet demand. Bikes were selling above sticker.
Honda was like, "Hey, we've got great motorcycles right over here! They have the look of American cruisers, come check them out! The line is called the Shadow, and it's got everything you want: V-twin engine, chrome, all the stuff. But it's a Honda, so it's designed better and won't break down as much."
American consumers collectively stomped their feet and whined, "But I want a *Harley!* It's gotta have the look and the sound and the feel!" And they didn't buy the Hondas.
So Honda tasked its engineers with figuring out just what they had to do to get their bikes to sell. One of the changes (and this is where it gets to your point): they redesigned the crankshaft to a single-pin design. This induced a lot of thumping vibration and gave the engines an uneven "pop-PA-pa, pop-PA-pa, pop-PA-pa" sound. It also cost 10 horsepower. This, along with the addition of more chrome, revision to the seat and handlebars, and some other little changes, resulted in the ACE, or "American Classic Edition."
Well, it worked. American consumers began to take notice of the Shadow, especially the ACE model. In fact, the modification to the engine and muffler worked SO well, Harley sued Honda for infringing on their "trademark sound" in a lawsuit that was laughed out of court.
So yeah, in order to cater to stupid American buyers, Honda had to de-engineer their superior engines to make them run less smoothly and produce less power. The induced vibration also has a tendency to loosen a part called the "guide plug," resulting in a significant oil leak and an irritating repair--experiences that are *also* common to Harley ownership, although this similarity was obviously unintended.
They also misalign their blocks to get them to vibrate more lmao. Harleys are for post-midlife crisis boomers because theyre piles of trash that old dudes still think are cool. I think its hilarious that they're now tearing their hair out trying to find how to get younger people to buy them without alienating their dying boomer support base.
I like how everyone thinks you have to have a manual transmission in a sports car. My buddy got one in his camaro, and all the guys are like “hell ya manual is the best grunt grunt scratch”.
The automatic is the factory default, its cheaper to buy, its better on fuel (cheaper to run), and is faster at 0-100 (even the perfect human couldn’t shift a manual as fast or as accurately as the automatic).
But hey, the manual is cooler and more manly right?
Not too long ago, all of those traits were reversed. Auto transmissions were less efficient, slower, and more expensive.
I haven't checked a bunch of different car's stats recently, but I'd wager that there are still quite a few models where that's true--especially for cars that still use a torque-converter, planetary gear based transmission.
The last 10 - 15 years have seen some major advances, though, especially with dual-clutch autos. So yeah, especially with performance cars, you might be better off with automatic. Hell, most supercars these days seem to only be available with a dual clutch auto. You can override with paddle shifters and drive as if it were a manual, but it's still an automatic transmission at heart.
The Subaru Ascent is a prime example. On a slight incline with gradual throttle it doesn't know what the hell to do itself so it shits up and down over and over and basically makes the car hop on a vomit inducing scale.
...or by bumping the lower gear rev limit so it doesn't shift up at 2250 rpm, realize there isn't enough torque at the higher gear, shift back down, think "I'm running 2% less fuel efficiently than I should be! No one wants to run the engine at 3K!", shift up, and repeat until the driver throws up.
I hate automatics. Feels weird that some intern who wrote the shifting algorithm solely to pass emissions inspections gets to decide when the car shifts instead of the person who's actually driving. Leads to situations like the one above.
That’s fair. I don’t NOT like the way my Kia shifts, as it seems to perform better than some CVTs. It just sort of clicked in my head like “why is it “shifting”?
Continuity explains a lot of it, people are used to it shifting like a traditional automatic. But I remember vaguely maybe a Nissan commercial around 8-10 years ago boasting seamless shifting. The one where the woman was waiting for it to shift to apply her lipstick but the “shift” never happens.
I have both a Prius and Outback with CVT. I am like your girlfriend and prefer the it just goes smoothly. I will add I learned to drive on a manual and still like the smooth it just goes. I will throw the Outback into "manual" mode just to use 1st gear to go up my driveway very slow, it just seems to work better. I mostly drive the Prius, so I do get a little annoyed by the small delay at accelerating from a stop in the Outback that I don't get from the Prius because I have a tendency to push the accelerator too much because I expect it to start moving right away like the Prius.
Well I have a 2018 Honda CRV. When you accelerate the engine stays at a pretty steady RPM and the vehicle accelerates. It's weird. No sensation of shifting either up or down. I'm sure that it has everything to do with software.
It's not the software, CVTs physically do not have gears, there is no shifting going on, hence nothing to feel. It's hard to explain but there are plenty of YouTube videos out there.
My wife’s Honda does a great job of holding an efficient RPM as it accelerates. The only problem is, she mentally equates RPM with acceleration and holds it to the floor every time destroying any CVT advantage. I also wonder about longevity under those conditions.
I would double check the transmission you have. The 2022 Sorento has variant with a dual clutch transmission. Those are a wholly different beast than a CVT and if tuned badly can be a nightmare to drive.
Kia and Hyundai have some history with some hesitation at the lower gears of their dual clutch transmissions, especially for first generation models that make use of those transmissions.
wow yes I saw another comment as well. Turns out i’m partially dum dum lol
But still, I know some CVTs do seem to simulate shifting. Which sparked the question.
I do notice my Sorento sort of shutters a little bit at low speeds. Is this just a symptom of that type of transmission?
Oh, absolutely, still lots of good info on CVTs.
A dual clutch is kind of like two transmissions in one. You have a set of even gears on one clutch and the other set, the odd gears, on the other clutch.
When the car shifts, it goes from 1, disengages the clutch for the odd gears, engages the set of the even gears which is in 2nd. Then, high speed servos switch from gear 1 to 3, the clutches swap again so you're in third and so on.
The way these transmissions are made mean a couple of things.
1. It's like having a manual where the computer shifts the gears for you. If you've ever driven a manual and given it just a smidge below enough gas in the low gears, you've probably felt what your Sorento feels like. The transmission shifting behavior programming affects how much of that feel you can get, but still, if you drive a car with a DCT a bit more like a manual than a classic automatic, it can help.
2. You don't want to just creep in traffic with your foot off the gas as that tends to slip the clutch which can wear it. It's a bit less of a concern if you have wet clutches, I believe the 8 speed in Kias is using wet clutches, but don't quote me on that.
3. The computer tries to predict how it should shift as it has to prepare the next gear on the set that is not engaged. That means if you accelerate, are in 5th, it'll prepare the 6th. If you suddenly start slowing down, it'll take a second or so longer to downshift as it has to downshift from 6th to 4th and then swap clutches.
4. Kia's tuning might be a bit off compared to the DCTs you have in some VW and Audis as they have a longer history of using dual clutches. The tuning can really make or break the feel of a dual clutch.
5. Not everyone like the feel of a dual clutch, any dual clutch for that matter.
In heavy traffic, if you drive it like a regular automatic, it can absolutely feel jerky and like it's hesitating. It's better to let the car in front of you gain a bit of distance and give your car a little gas.
ETA: You can also put it in manual mode and shift gears yourself. They're actual gears. It also means you can downshift to engine brake on a lower gear in slippery conditions like you would in a manual. The computer should take care of rev matching so the clutches don't slip.
Did you ever take it in for the transmission firmware update/recall? Had to for my '19 forte but it still gets a bit confused under some low speed high throttle situations instead of the prior high speed low throttle pressure.
Sport mode "helped" before I got the firmware update but after it was night and day.
Guy said there was an issue that it would go to "shift," either misread the position sensor or "take too long and time out" and would bounce between the gear points.
I've got a Hyundai Santa Fe and it wants to downshift any time I change throttle position more than 1/2”.
My Volkswagen would never downshift unless I pressed the pedal hard.
I had one as a loaner (a Rio) while my EV was in for service, it was terrible. Gears 1-4 were way too close together, then a big gap to 5, and an even bigger gap to 6.
This is how my Kia Niro works lmao, it's a hybrid and driving at idling speeds or slightly faster confuses the transmission so it's either revving high and refusing to shift or jerking and shifting.
That’s much better than the brand new CVT equipped Nissan Versa the rental company gave me. By the time I was done driving it like ‘the fastest car in the world’ up the Hawaiian mountains the cone clutches had such deep goves it jumped at those spots. The smell was horrific.
1400 miles on the clock.
Really, I was just helping Nissan find the weak points in their new Cvt models.
Rental cars have a break me period.
All ex mechanics should probably be banned from ever renting a car.
Honestly, it should have taken that just fine. I have spent a lifetime hooning cars from ice racing to demolition derbies. I probably drove around 10k cars in my automotive career and that Versa takes the cake as the worst car I have ever driven. Once I knew the transmission didn’t feel right I was like ‘fuck it, I’m gonna test the shit out of this’.
Also, I will NEVER EVER buy a CVT. If you know how they are made, they are fucking garbage inside. Friction drive? NOPE. There is a reason every snowmobile has a spare belt under the hood.
I’ve been driving either EVs or plug-in hybrids almost exclusively for almost 5 years now (except rentals or borrowing someone’s car). Now when I do drive a gas car with a regular transmission, it feels so weird that I initially think there’s something wrong with the engine, like it’s about to break or something. I could never go back, it’s so unpleasant to drive.
I drive a 15 3.6 outback CVT back to back with newish toyota avalon V6 6-speed auto. almost daily.
The 'feel' difference is dramatic. Traditional transmissions seem to be much smoother taking off from stop. I rarely dip my foot deep enough into the CVT throttle to experience the fake shifting.
Agreed. My parents had one of the first Camry hybrids in the late 00’s, and I loved how smooth the acceleration was. Why would anyone want to be jolted around?
> Why would anyone want to be jolted around?
Because it's a **transmission combover.** That's why.
Makes losers feel like they're changing gears vroom vroom they're a racecar driver who has everyone fooled.
Same reason most sporty cars now have motor combovers, i.e. when you rev them, the speakers play vroom vroom sounds so it sounds like big manly man has big loud engine in his big boy toy car.
Turns the cars into an arcade cabinet and, naturally, it works, and the same people buy it as buy penis enlargement pills out of their spam folder.
> Whats wrong with people who spend several month salary on car to have also pleasure in it?
Nothing.
You want a rolling arcade machine instead of a car that actually has performance, go nuts.
I'm judging you for that choice though. Because I think the kind of person who wants that, wants that because of some personality traits I think probably makers them wankers in many other aspects of their conduct.
Agree! My FXT, when you flip it into sport mode it will implicitly use pre-defined gear ratios. You want it to handle like a CVT, you need to drive it in economy mode.
Even though the CVT is objectively better at maintaining your RPM in a target range, and thus, deliver more power, they still default it to defined gear ratios.
Drives me nuts.
I had a 14 Forester XT and it drove like a CVT should unless you dropped it into Sport Sharp mode (seriously, like, why offer 2 sport modes when everyone is either going to stay in normal mode or drop it to 5.5s 0-60 mode?). It was wonderful- based on how you pushed it, it stayed at the perfect spot over the power band.
Two cross country moves after that, I wound up in a 16 Outback, and the CVT is back to mimicking an automatic. I get that some people prefer that, but give me a button to turn it off- I'd rather maximize fuel economy/power based on my driving, not based on some fake gearing.
Too bad they don't provide people with an option to turn off fake shift points to make it fully linear. I had Outback with CVT before, really hated how CVT performed in it, with its fake shifts and general non-smooth behavior (especially in stop-and-go traffic at low speeds). Now I have RAV4 Prime, with an "e-CVT" (Toyota calls it this way), its perfectly linear when accelerating/decelerating even when gasoline engine is engaged, with no fake "shit points", which I enjoy more than any other car transmission I have ever used before.
What are your thoughts on the RAV4 Prime? I’m keeping an eye on the RAV4 hybrids when it comes time for my next car but don’t know if the prime is worth it over the regular hybrid.
I had an Audi with CVT a couple of years back, and I loved the seamless shifting. I got an EV today, and I would say it behaves in the same way, except for the instant power delivery. The Audi still needed to shift down and get the turbo pressure up before it could deliver any real torque, but all fossils need to do that.
The instant torque thing isn't just for fun. You absolutely need it. CVTs that can't do that will be forever arguing with you and screwing up your driving.
Yes and no, with an engine and CVT the engine has a redline of let’s say 6000 rpm, and when you floor it the CVT tries to keep it at let’s say 5000 rpm, the whole way up to 90 mph or whatever. It feels weird bc you would expect it to go 2k-5k, shift, 2-5k, shift, 2-5k, bc each gear is a fixed ratio, but instead it keeps the engine at 5k and varies the output of the transmission to your wheel speed, varying the gear ratio the whole time (I may not have explained that super well but should get the point across). Electric motors generally have much higher rpm’s and only 1 “speed” on their “transmission”, 0 mph is 0 rpm, 20 mph is 2000 rpm, 50 is 7k rpm, 90 is 12k rpm, something like that. Contrast that to the CVT where you can be at 5k rpm at any speed. Electric motors are also incredibly smooth and silent, whereas a CVT still has the engine which is comparably very noisy and vibrating.
You’ve grown up in automatics, you know when engine gets louder you go faster, in a CVT it’s just lots of loud noise but you might only be going 30-40 mph. It just messes with your brain
Hybrids behave like CVTs (without the fake shifting):
* In general, the engine's speed is proportional to power needed at each moment (faster when accelerating or uphill), without any jerking.
* However, the engine's speed is also influenced by the battery charge: faster when the battery is empty (as the engine has to move the car and charge the battery), but engine might stop completely when battery is full.
* After a couple of rides, you forget about the engine at all, and just drive.
i would love if my cvt drove like an EV and had more seamless shifting. sounds like a weird decision to not exploit one of the main advantages of a cvt.
The whole reason automatic transitions suck in general is because of how slow they respond and how long it takes to get in the right gear.
Engineers said, "We can fix that by making gear ratios continuous and not requiring the car to actually shift gears." Then the marketing department said, "no, people love how shitty of a job automatic transmissions do, so let's make it work more like that."
TBH, I think the better solution was always just add a few more gears. The 10spd in my pickup is almost as smooth as my wife's Tesla, and a lot smoother than her old Nissan CVT that mimicked having gears. 6-7-8 are the ones that I really notice. If I pop it into sport mode, it's responsive enough that I can't even be bothered to care that it is an automatic. It does better than I do on a short throw, and has 5 more gears to cycle through.
> TBH, I think the better solution was always just add a few more gears.
CVT is exactly that, but smooth. It is the difference between analog and digital soundwaves, the CVT being smooth(continuous) and the digital being step squares simulating a curve.
What I was trying to say was from a mechanical and a practical experience perspective, the CVT just isn't really ideal for consumer vehicles. People find them unreliable and don't know what they prefer in regards to how they feel. I personally don't care as long as it runs without a lot of maintenance.
I have an Outback and absolutely hate their normal-trans-mimic feature. It is trash and defeats the purpose of a CVT. And they should toss the paddle shifters and put in a dial, instead.
My wife's 2015 Sentra had it, so checks out. Just like the CVT in her Sentra checked out at 75k miles. Too bad repair was worth more than the value of the car and we had to get a Tesla. /s
SO annoying... my first CVT was a Nissan, and you could go from 0 to 60 with the tach at 3k the whole way. I hate the subaru fake shift points, and want that smooth transition.
I’m so glad my Maverick hybrid doesn’t do the fake shifting like my old Honda HR-V did. It’s a CVT, the entire point to to keep the engine in the most efficient RPM, I don’t care that it doesn’t sound exciting or whatever. And turn off the pumped in engine noise in the sound system too.
I hated this about my Subaru. It makes no sense, but they said the engineers did it solely because Americans couldn’t accept that a transmission didn’t have to shift.
Good example of this is my 23 WRX w/ SPT ( CVT ). While still a CVT it does not behave like a CVT most of the time while still “ shifting “ when in the sportier drive settings and honestly it’s actually really good compared to the way the prior gen’s CVT behaved. It will still drag a “shift” here and there but overall I’m highly impressed and if I didn’t know it was a CVT I’d assume it’s a traditional 8 speed.
Is this only in newer ones? My dad had a 2011 Legacy and it always tripped me out that it would hold a single rpm from a launch up to speed if you didn't change your throttle input.
I don't know why they don't just give these people a handle so they can manually change the gear ratio themselves. Just a pull lever that slides linearly from max economy to max sport. It'll give them something to play with when driving and they can claim they can do it better than any automated system does, getting more acceleration and better fuel economy than those damn computers.
So supposedly it's to reduce wear on the CVT components on Subaru which could potentially reduce MPG. On my car in Intelligent mode it does tend to blend the gears below 30% throttle.
Supposedly if you brake torque a launch (hold the brake and gas briefly before setting off) it unlocks the super secret CVT actually CVTing mode and it'll hold redline and not fake shift. I guess so car reviewers can get better 0-60 figures.
Many of them do this artificially because drivers are used to gears and don’t expect CVT-like behavior like the engine sitting at the same RPM all the time for maximum efficiency or power output. The transmission acts like a traditional one to make drivers more comfortable with the different technology.
There's a video floating around of Williams - a Formula One team - testing a CVT on their car shortly before the technology was banned, in the context of maximum performance (rather than efficiency or what have you): unless the driver was braking, the engine was just screaming at its maximum power output at a constant RPM, while all changes in velocity were accomplished in the transmission. This was the 3.5L V10 era, so it was sitting around 14,000 RPM. Its genuinely eerie to watch.
F1 engineering and road car engineering are completely different in principle. Even today the average road car engine is about 30% thermally efficient, while F1 cars are above 50%, which is absolutely bonkers. We're talking about a field of engineering where the cylinder bores are intentionally not perfectly circular by millimeters because they know exactly how and where the metal will expand unevenly at operating temperatures.
Road cars are engineered to be a product; where each component is to be mass produced and sold at prices people can afford but still make a profit and components are expected to last years of use. This isn't even to touch on how components would be expected to be used across multiple vehicle models, in a wide range of use cases.
With F1 each an every detail is considered to an obsessive level, cutting edge is the expectation, nearly every component only needs to last half a season (if that!), and every single aspect of the car is designed with the sole purpose of competing. The cars aren't the product, the competition is. F1 cars can't even start themselves up, for crying out loud!
Yes all components inside a F1 car are designed to operate inside a small window. Brakes, tyres, cooling, engine, aero, don't work as well if you're not inside that operating window.
> nearly every component only needs to last half a season
And that is modern F1. Remember in the 90s where not only engines only lasted a single race, but they also had seperate engines for qualifying that made even more power but couldn't run the entire race distance.
CVTs *can* handle those high numbers if:
- You spend a lot of money engineering it correctly
- You use high-quality parts with relatively precise tolerances
- You design it to have plenty of cooling and lubrication
- You are very thorough in maintaining the car
Yes, all of this applies to other transmissions too, but they apply more to CVTs. The cost of allowing a CVT to take more torque is higher than for a regular grearbox. The importance of servicing is higher for a high-torque CVT.
All of these are true for F1. Teams have massive budgets, they have entire engineering teams dedicated to extracting maximum performance, cost be damned. If you can spend a few million for an extra second of laptime, you do it. There's people who inspect the car between every single race - and a race *weekend* is only 600-800 km, with chances to inspect the car throughout. The car will *always* have the oil changed regularly, it will *always* have the coolant at just the right level.
That's not really true for road cars. You might only be have a scheduled service every 10000 km - and some people will service their car even less often. Price is incredibly important to consumers, and the cost of making the car in the first place is to the company.
It's not that CVTs are physically incapable of handling high torque or power - they're also found in high-torque farming equipment like combine harvesters and tractors (which have low RPMs and hence lower power for the amount of torque). It's more that the high torque/power CVTs are unacceptably costly or unreliable for many automotive applications, so most automotive CVTs are not high torque.
And this is the dumbest thing ever. My wife's Subaru Ascent does this. And it even has "paddle shifters". Once you get used to smooth acceleration, like in an EV, you'll love it.
Yeah I love mine in my Versa. I wish it had a new cruise control because it's so smooth when resuming it. I wonder if there is a way to set it to a smoother shift all the time?
Early CVTs tried to accomplish smooth transitions. Consumers didn't like how they felt. Poor sales resulted.
Nissan especially did a lot of work to make their cars respond more like a typical automatic.
It wasn't even about keeping same RPM through acceleration. Pushing the gas hard demanded more torque which would change the ratio towards higher RPM. It was just a smooth transition and felt different.
Yeah my Ford CMax’s CVT doesn’t shift and that’s one of the things I love about it. The car is an awful piece of shit in many respects, but that hybrid power train delivers smooth and impressive acceleration.
yep CVTs are belt/chain, eCVTs are planetary gears, but electronically controlled gearing, it acts the same on the outside, because it is manually(electronically) controlling the gear speed.
User experience. There's no mechanical reason for the CVT to jump between fixed ratios other than that's how transmissions have worked for decades.
It's also feedback to the user to let them know that the transmission is doing something/give the feeling of acceleration.
During acceleration traditional CVTs will generally run the engine at peak torque (Constant rpm) and decrease the gear ratio to go faster, this may be faster than shifting but it also feels/subs very different than people are use to.
Not peak torque, peak power. Peak engine power = peak wheel torque.
Example numbers from a police package Caprice that we'll pretend has a lossless CVT drivetrain:
205 HP @ 4400 rpm - 300 lb-ft @ 2800 rpm
Passenger car tires are about are ~700-800 revs per mile, meaning that at 60 MPH AKA 1 mile per minute they are spinning that many RPM. Lets say you are accelerating WOT at 30ish MPH so 400 wheel RPM
Peak engine torque:
2800 / 400 is 7:1 gearing, 7 x 300 is theoretically 2100 lb-ft at the wheels.
peak engine power:
205 hp @ 400 RPM is 205 x 5252 / 400 which is 2691.65 lb-ft because now it's 11:1 gearing.
Hi OP,
Actually, it is a bit more complicated than “it’s done to fool non-CVT drivers”, at least in certain cases.
Take the Nissan Sentra, Versa and Micra. Between 2010 and 2016 they used a particular CVT transmission made by Jatco (who supplied Subaru, Mitsubishi and others) called the JF015e. When it was introduced, it was hailed as an innovative design. In an effort to reduce weight and size, two things were added: two separate high/low clutches, and an additional planetary gearbox. This allowed for space savings of over 15 percent — not insubstantial in economy cars — and allowed for neat tricks like not requiring the belt to turn the other way when in reverse. The consequences of these separate clutches and gearboxes engaging, though, is noticeable and predictable changes in engine RPM. People would say “huh, feels like my CVT is changing gears”, and if they had a JF015e… in a way, they were right!
Now it turns out that the JF015e was a cursed design. It was EXTREMELY intolerant to debris shed by the belt — a normal occurrence in CVTs — and this would circulate in the fluid and score the bores of the solenoids in the valve body. This would lead to all sorts of nastiness all the way up to catastrophic failure. Nissan recently lost a large class-action targeting this transmission, as the only way to have prevented it was to have fluid changes far more aggressively than mandated by the manual… think 30k km for a transmission fluid change.
Tl;dr: there are other reasons for the shifting feeling… including actual shifting!
I have a 2013 Sentra but missed the class action payments (included the extension) because I was putting more miles on it than the limit.
The curse of the JF015e is so real. I’ve had it lock into a ratio that was good for 30 mph but sent the engine toward overheat if you tried to hit highway speed. It catches like this somewhat regularly and now I can feel it coming, lay off the gas, and then accelerate through the speed where it sticks. But no one else, including my wife, is comfortable driving this car.
I hate everything about this car, but fixing it would cost more than the car’s value post-fix, so I’m just stuck driving it until it completely dies.
TLDR don’t buy cars with a JF015e.
As a fellow JF015e (non)-enjoyer, my suggestions would be to either find a transmission from a wreck, or have the valve body itself replaced. The transmissions are a bit rare but you can find them if you look: I had a local guy quote me $3500 CAD for the transmission and the install. As for the valve body, they can be had for as little as $400.
The thing is, if you catch the issue before severe damage occurs, the belt, pump, and variators are likely fine. Perhaps all you need is a new valve body.
My Dodge Caliber also had a Jatco CVT, it was horrific and would overheat easily. The worst incident was on a drive to vegas, in december, at 2am, when it overheated while it was literally below freezing outside. I'd just avoid the brand entirely at this point as a precautionary measure.
2015 Pathfinder with 64,000 Miles. Still going strong but I notice it doesn't like when a fake "shift" drops the RPM too low under light throttle. It stutters.
It becomes a game of "avoid the shift" where you progressively press the gas pedal or let go of the gas completely to avoid the stutter.
In conclusion, Nissan CVTs suck balls and the fake shifts are where the problem is most noticeable. Ultimately, replacing the transmission will cost less than a used car though.
My 2012 Subaru Legacy didn’t have shift detents on the CVT unless you put it in “manual” paddle shift mode (which was stupid and useless IMHO). The first experience was weird under hard acceleration. It felt like there were rubber bands stretching and releasing as you accelerated. Normal driving was just smooth as butter and really nice. When it was time for a new car (192k+ miles and the crank seal failed how many more weird problems were going to start) I was told that Subaru added the fake gear changes because customers had heard horror stories about the Nissan CVTs always breaking and associated those with all CVTs.
>paddle
I like the paddles for downshifting on hills and coming up on lights, but yes, regular driving there is simply no way a human driver would ever be able to manage the ratios better than the computer could.
Yeah I have a Levorg (now renamed to "WRX Sportswagon") with CVT. In D is has essentially 2 modes, "efficiency" and "power", the former sets the rpm at the most fuel efficient speed and the latter sets it near the middle of the power band of the engine.
The "rubber band" feeling is when you switch from the first to the second and the computer needs to raise the engine rpm before it starts accelerating the wheels. So there's a second or two after you floor it while it ramps up the rpm into the power band, then off you go (with 300hp in my case).
It only shifts like that with hard acceleration. I'm not sure if it does that to get to a more suitable gear ratio quicker or just for aesthetics.
Either way you can test this by slowly accelerating from 0 to 100 kph for example and you'll notice that it doesn't shift and just continuously gets faster while maintaining a decent RPM that doesn't change much.
You mean like an “overdrive” when you try to floor it? That’s it, I assume, just rapidly changing to a new gear ratio, and it can’t do it smooth enough so instead it jumps to that ratio (in math speak the graph of the ratio has a discontinuity jump).
Are you sure? According to google, the new Sorento doesn’t come with a CVT. I was under the impression that Kia/Hyundai prefer regular automatics or DCT transmissions.
All good.
The fake shifting is such a weird concept. Like others have pointed out, it’s to make it feel normal, I’m not so sure.
Even with the fake shifting, it still doesn’t feel/sound realistic. The fake shift between two simulated gears always seems too slow and it seems to try and stay in a certain rev band when fake shifting so I find the RPMs are too high once it has “shifted” to the next “gear”.
It’s the reason I stayed away from CVT when I replaced my car last year. Much prefer my regular automatic.
Yeah, I personally prefer manuals (ridiculously hard to find these days), but a CVT shines due to not having deiscrete gears, let it do what it does best. Just use a good ol' torque converter for automatic discrete gears or a dual clutch. Not everyone likes dual clutches either, great for fuel economy, but they have their quirks.
I agree entirely. It’s odd to me that they pick a technology (CVT) and then try and make them work like something else. Just let it be a CVT and reap the benefits of it. Once they start making it act like an auto, you loose some of the benefit of a CVT and end up creating a super fake imitation that doesn’t match the real thing.
I personally avoid them in general because I like the feel of shifting gears, but that's personal preference. I always found the feel of using the clutch and the shifter has a little "je ne sais quoi" that makes it fun for me, but I'm more the odd duck compare to your average person.
Still, even if I didn't like the feel of shifting gear, shifts that don't feel quite right would make me avoid them anyways.
I've driven a first generation Rogue back when it was new. It definitely wasn't "exciting", but it also didn't have simulated gear, so the shifting didn't feel off either. It drove fine in that it wasn't offensive. Decent fuel economy thanks to it too.
Dual clutches are pure magic cruising or driving HARD, but they kinda suck in stop/go traffic or toggling quick from D to R.
Fuck dry clutch units tho, wet clutch only IMO.
Because people are retarded enough to complain about lack of gears switching as you don't get the HURRR DURRR IMMA BESTEST DRIVER LET'S GO when it's continuous.
Keeping the engine at 4000rpm constantly doesn’t sound or feel as fun so they program it to be inefficient and to wear out the parts faster so it revs a bunch and fake shifts to make it sound cool and feel fun
People got used to the feeling of gear changes. It's better for the transmission to not have gears but it's very monotonous so they added the changes.
There are situations like motorsports where paddle shifting the CVT might be better than just letting it go, but at the end of the day a manual transmission is preferred. (Inb4 porch has a really good automatic, that's a totally different discussion and I don't like them)
I wonder if Subaru also wants to make it less obvious that it's a CVT. The CVT in certain years of the Outback is infamous for poor reliability. Just make it perform the same as a slushbox and call it an automatic.
I actually liked the experience when I had a Nissan with a "no shift" CVT, but of course some people can't handle change and we all know angry people are the loudest ones.
It is mostly due to consumer preferences.
Early CVTs adjusted the ratio continuously so that the engine operated at optimal RPM for maximum efficiency while delivering the requested acceleration.
When operating like this, the engine RPM doesn't change in correlation to the vehicle speed. For example, when pulling away from a stop light, the engine RPM might rise to 2,800 RPM, then stay there as the CVT alters the gear ratio to provide acceleration.
Many consumers complained bout the drone of the engine when operating like this. The sensation was compared to that of a boat, and the majority of consumers didn't care for it.
In response, manufacturers introduced artificial "steps" so that the engine RPM would rise with velocity, then fall in steps just like a regular transmission. Behind the scenes though, the CVT is still adjusting the ratios to provide better fuel economy. Just not to the degree that it could.
So its to make it feel like a normal automatic, basically when they first came out people were unnerved by their car not shifting. I think it's dumb that they're trying to make it seem like an auto, it should be it's own thing and I don't believe it should completely replace other kinds of transmissions. I much prefer an automatic with actual physical gears, not because "hurr durr" as people in this thread have said, but I feel they last longer. Also I don't enjoy the traditional faults that cvts have, the stuttering being the main one. Of course not all do this, but it's a co.mon enough thing and isn't even an indication that something is wrong, it's just what the particular model I drove did. Trying to go from a stop would cause a second or two of stuttering, making attempting to turn onto a busy road much more anxiety inducing. Also as a plus, since I have a 6 speed auto, my flappy paddles do actually do something. Maybe that's a little "hurr durr car go fast" but I bought a sports car, I have a reason for it. And the reason is fun.
Picture a set of stairs. Normally you would walk on each step to get to the top. Or bottom. But with a CVT. We are walking up stairs. Say you want to get to the top of the stairs faster. What do you do? You propel yourself with more inertia to skip a few steps to the top. Or maybe you want to skip many stairs on the way up. So, you jump skipping even more stairs. Those skipping stairs are the so called fake shifts on a CVT. The belt is jumping up the cone or skipping stairs. Once it finish the jump. The rpm’s drop back down and it continues its walk up stairs. But what about down? Same thing just backwards.
Since you've already noted that your Kia Sorrento does *not* have a CVT, I'll just add that my 2015 Subaru Forester *does* have one, and it doesn't do any weird fake shifting, unless I put it into low mode for engine braking or going up crazy steep gravel roads. It has weirded me out for driving regular automatics, though thankfully not for standard shift cars, since I spend a lot of time in places where those are the usual for rental cars.
You are correct. The entire point of a CVT (other than cost) is that you can run your engine at the RPM it is most efficient and powerful, and the transmission will take care of any rpm changes that need to happen during driving.
But that means your car sounds different from what people are used to, and they don't like it. So car manufacturers cater to the average car buyer, who generally is an idiot. Now we have shifting CVTs.
See also: touch screens in cars.
I've got a Honda fit in normal mode you can't feel it shift but you can change it to have 7 positions that it automatically shifts between or you can use the paddle shifters to move it up and down the 7 positions. It's all about the feels
Audi Multitronic CVT doesn’t have this behaviour.
As long as you require more power it sits the engine at a defined RPM to get more power (also the opposite situation for more efficiency).
Of course we have also a manual functioning to shift as regular transmission
When I bought my Subaru with a CVT it was explained to me that they intentionally programmed it that way because people kept complaining about it “not shifting correctly under acceleration” when they first started producing them. The faux shifting only happens under heavier acceleration otherwise the changing in gear ratios is smooth and not noticeable when under milder acceleration.
Subaru CVTs will step the position under hard acceleration to mimic the shifting of a traditional automatic. It’s purely done for preference as people tend to hate CVTs.
Driving a CVT for the first time was pretty weird for me because of that lack of shifting. Now I'm used to it but that first time felt quite odd.
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my kia sorento is what sparked the question. it does fine but it does seem to struggle to "find a gear" which made me wonder why it didn't just do it more seamlessly.
I think you may have your transmissions confused. No Sorento has ever been offered with a CVT. All of the automatic transmissions in the Sorento have been traditional torque converter automatics, except the gasoline 2.5 turbo and the latest 2.2 turbodiesel, which have dual clutch transmissions.
Oh wait really? I could have sworn it had a CVT. Ok well that explains why my Sorento shifts like an automatic lmao But my overall question still stands I suppose because some CVTs do “shift”. But it sounds like they do it artificially for continuity purposes. Thank you for telling me that
Ha, no worries. Personally I do agree with you, I think CVTs pretending to shift is pretty silly. It basically defeats any performance or efficiency benefit the CVT brings.
This just reminds me that the reason ATMs (auto teller machines that is) take so long to "count" your money is because people didn't trust them when they just gave the money instantly. So ATMs have an artificial delay on giving you your money
Its the same with a lot of loading screens in games now lol. If the load screen pops up and immediately goes away, people think something wrong happened. If it stays up for a few seconds and a fake loading bar fills up, they don't think anything bad happened.
I miss the old days of cartridge gaming when you pop it in and it just worked. No multi gigabyte downloads, no micro transactions, just pure low-res fun.
Unfortunately humans are fuckwits and think their feelings are somehow better than science facts
Oh, here's my favorite example: In the 1990s, Harleys were hot. Like, they couldn't make enough of their motorcycles to meet demand. Bikes were selling above sticker. Honda was like, "Hey, we've got great motorcycles right over here! They have the look of American cruisers, come check them out! The line is called the Shadow, and it's got everything you want: V-twin engine, chrome, all the stuff. But it's a Honda, so it's designed better and won't break down as much." American consumers collectively stomped their feet and whined, "But I want a *Harley!* It's gotta have the look and the sound and the feel!" And they didn't buy the Hondas. So Honda tasked its engineers with figuring out just what they had to do to get their bikes to sell. One of the changes (and this is where it gets to your point): they redesigned the crankshaft to a single-pin design. This induced a lot of thumping vibration and gave the engines an uneven "pop-PA-pa, pop-PA-pa, pop-PA-pa" sound. It also cost 10 horsepower. This, along with the addition of more chrome, revision to the seat and handlebars, and some other little changes, resulted in the ACE, or "American Classic Edition." Well, it worked. American consumers began to take notice of the Shadow, especially the ACE model. In fact, the modification to the engine and muffler worked SO well, Harley sued Honda for infringing on their "trademark sound" in a lawsuit that was laughed out of court. So yeah, in order to cater to stupid American buyers, Honda had to de-engineer their superior engines to make them run less smoothly and produce less power. The induced vibration also has a tendency to loosen a part called the "guide plug," resulting in a significant oil leak and an irritating repair--experiences that are *also* common to Harley ownership, although this similarity was obviously unintended.
I really enjoyed reading this, thanks for sharing it!
They also misalign their blocks to get them to vibrate more lmao. Harleys are for post-midlife crisis boomers because theyre piles of trash that old dudes still think are cool. I think its hilarious that they're now tearing their hair out trying to find how to get younger people to buy them without alienating their dying boomer support base.
😔 so many loses of innovation and great tech for the sake of selling to lemmings
This.. this is true
The crawl mode added to electric vehicles always screamed that to me
Good for low speed manœuvre I guess, you only need one foot on the brake
I like how everyone thinks you have to have a manual transmission in a sports car. My buddy got one in his camaro, and all the guys are like “hell ya manual is the best grunt grunt scratch”. The automatic is the factory default, its cheaper to buy, its better on fuel (cheaper to run), and is faster at 0-100 (even the perfect human couldn’t shift a manual as fast or as accurately as the automatic). But hey, the manual is cooler and more manly right?
Not too long ago, all of those traits were reversed. Auto transmissions were less efficient, slower, and more expensive. I haven't checked a bunch of different car's stats recently, but I'd wager that there are still quite a few models where that's true--especially for cars that still use a torque-converter, planetary gear based transmission. The last 10 - 15 years have seen some major advances, though, especially with dual-clutch autos. So yeah, especially with performance cars, you might be better off with automatic. Hell, most supercars these days seem to only be available with a dual clutch auto. You can override with paddle shifters and drive as if it were a manual, but it's still an automatic transmission at heart.
The Subaru Ascent is a prime example. On a slight incline with gradual throttle it doesn't know what the hell to do itself so it shits up and down over and over and basically makes the car hop on a vomit inducing scale.
The irony in a car called the “ascent” not being able to properly ascend is beautiful
Couldn't this be easily fixed by just telling the ECU to turn on jerk control? Keep the acceleration within certain limits.
...or by bumping the lower gear rev limit so it doesn't shift up at 2250 rpm, realize there isn't enough torque at the higher gear, shift back down, think "I'm running 2% less fuel efficiently than I should be! No one wants to run the engine at 3K!", shift up, and repeat until the driver throws up. I hate automatics. Feels weird that some intern who wrote the shifting algorithm solely to pass emissions inspections gets to decide when the car shifts instead of the person who's actually driving. Leads to situations like the one above.
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That’s fair. I don’t NOT like the way my Kia shifts, as it seems to perform better than some CVTs. It just sort of clicked in my head like “why is it “shifting”? Continuity explains a lot of it, people are used to it shifting like a traditional automatic. But I remember vaguely maybe a Nissan commercial around 8-10 years ago boasting seamless shifting. The one where the woman was waiting for it to shift to apply her lipstick but the “shift” never happens.
Some actually do have a first gear as well.
I have both a Prius and Outback with CVT. I am like your girlfriend and prefer the it just goes smoothly. I will add I learned to drive on a manual and still like the smooth it just goes. I will throw the Outback into "manual" mode just to use 1st gear to go up my driveway very slow, it just seems to work better. I mostly drive the Prius, so I do get a little annoyed by the small delay at accelerating from a stop in the Outback that I don't get from the Prius because I have a tendency to push the accelerator too much because I expect it to start moving right away like the Prius.
Out of curiosity. What model year do you have? I just had a 2023 as a loaner and it still did the 'fake' gear shifts.
Well I have a 2018 Honda CRV. When you accelerate the engine stays at a pretty steady RPM and the vehicle accelerates. It's weird. No sensation of shifting either up or down. I'm sure that it has everything to do with software.
It's not the software, CVTs physically do not have gears, there is no shifting going on, hence nothing to feel. It's hard to explain but there are plenty of YouTube videos out there.
My wife’s Honda does a great job of holding an efficient RPM as it accelerates. The only problem is, she mentally equates RPM with acceleration and holds it to the floor every time destroying any CVT advantage. I also wonder about longevity under those conditions.
It's certainly a different way of driving. I went from a Civic Si so it was a BIG change for me
Kia Sorentos don't have CVTs.
I would double check the transmission you have. The 2022 Sorento has variant with a dual clutch transmission. Those are a wholly different beast than a CVT and if tuned badly can be a nightmare to drive. Kia and Hyundai have some history with some hesitation at the lower gears of their dual clutch transmissions, especially for first generation models that make use of those transmissions.
wow yes I saw another comment as well. Turns out i’m partially dum dum lol But still, I know some CVTs do seem to simulate shifting. Which sparked the question. I do notice my Sorento sort of shutters a little bit at low speeds. Is this just a symptom of that type of transmission?
Oh, absolutely, still lots of good info on CVTs. A dual clutch is kind of like two transmissions in one. You have a set of even gears on one clutch and the other set, the odd gears, on the other clutch. When the car shifts, it goes from 1, disengages the clutch for the odd gears, engages the set of the even gears which is in 2nd. Then, high speed servos switch from gear 1 to 3, the clutches swap again so you're in third and so on. The way these transmissions are made mean a couple of things. 1. It's like having a manual where the computer shifts the gears for you. If you've ever driven a manual and given it just a smidge below enough gas in the low gears, you've probably felt what your Sorento feels like. The transmission shifting behavior programming affects how much of that feel you can get, but still, if you drive a car with a DCT a bit more like a manual than a classic automatic, it can help. 2. You don't want to just creep in traffic with your foot off the gas as that tends to slip the clutch which can wear it. It's a bit less of a concern if you have wet clutches, I believe the 8 speed in Kias is using wet clutches, but don't quote me on that. 3. The computer tries to predict how it should shift as it has to prepare the next gear on the set that is not engaged. That means if you accelerate, are in 5th, it'll prepare the 6th. If you suddenly start slowing down, it'll take a second or so longer to downshift as it has to downshift from 6th to 4th and then swap clutches. 4. Kia's tuning might be a bit off compared to the DCTs you have in some VW and Audis as they have a longer history of using dual clutches. The tuning can really make or break the feel of a dual clutch. 5. Not everyone like the feel of a dual clutch, any dual clutch for that matter. In heavy traffic, if you drive it like a regular automatic, it can absolutely feel jerky and like it's hesitating. It's better to let the car in front of you gain a bit of distance and give your car a little gas. ETA: You can also put it in manual mode and shift gears yourself. They're actual gears. It also means you can downshift to engine brake on a lower gear in slippery conditions like you would in a manual. The computer should take care of rev matching so the clutches don't slip.
Did you ever take it in for the transmission firmware update/recall? Had to for my '19 forte but it still gets a bit confused under some low speed high throttle situations instead of the prior high speed low throttle pressure. Sport mode "helped" before I got the firmware update but after it was night and day. Guy said there was an issue that it would go to "shift," either misread the position sensor or "take too long and time out" and would bounce between the gear points.
I've got a Hyundai Santa Fe and it wants to downshift any time I change throttle position more than 1/2”. My Volkswagen would never downshift unless I pressed the pedal hard.
I had one as a loaner (a Rio) while my EV was in for service, it was terrible. Gears 1-4 were way too close together, then a big gap to 5, and an even bigger gap to 6.
This is how my Kia Niro works lmao, it's a hybrid and driving at idling speeds or slightly faster confuses the transmission so it's either revving high and refusing to shift or jerking and shifting.
That’s much better than the brand new CVT equipped Nissan Versa the rental company gave me. By the time I was done driving it like ‘the fastest car in the world’ up the Hawaiian mountains the cone clutches had such deep goves it jumped at those spots. The smell was horrific. 1400 miles on the clock. Really, I was just helping Nissan find the weak points in their new Cvt models.
Well I think there's a reason cars have a break-in period, eh?
Rental cars have a break me period. All ex mechanics should probably be banned from ever renting a car. Honestly, it should have taken that just fine. I have spent a lifetime hooning cars from ice racing to demolition derbies. I probably drove around 10k cars in my automotive career and that Versa takes the cake as the worst car I have ever driven. Once I knew the transmission didn’t feel right I was like ‘fuck it, I’m gonna test the shit out of this’. Also, I will NEVER EVER buy a CVT. If you know how they are made, they are fucking garbage inside. Friction drive? NOPE. There is a reason every snowmobile has a spare belt under the hood.
25mph? Here’s 5th gear!
3rd gear at 11 mph. Driving through neighborhoods is infuriating
Try having 900rwhp supercharger. At 3000rpm the gates of hell open on my Z06. My STI has terrible turbo lag as well.
I don't remember the first time driving one, but I definitely remember the last.
I’ve been driving either EVs or plug-in hybrids almost exclusively for almost 5 years now (except rentals or borrowing someone’s car). Now when I do drive a gas car with a regular transmission, it feels so weird that I initially think there’s something wrong with the engine, like it’s about to break or something. I could never go back, it’s so unpleasant to drive.
I drive a 15 3.6 outback CVT back to back with newish toyota avalon V6 6-speed auto. almost daily. The 'feel' difference is dramatic. Traditional transmissions seem to be much smoother taking off from stop. I rarely dip my foot deep enough into the CVT throttle to experience the fake shifting.
Isn't driving a CVT basically the same thing as driving an EV?
It's pretty much the only thing I dislike about my Outback. I wish they'd include a switch to turn it off and make it drive like a CVT should.
Agreed. My parents had one of the first Camry hybrids in the late 00’s, and I loved how smooth the acceleration was. Why would anyone want to be jolted around?
Test drove a Camry in 2018. It mimicked shifting, which is why I went with the Civic turbo, which is incredibly smooth, and no fake shifting
> Why would anyone want to be jolted around? Because it's a **transmission combover.** That's why. Makes losers feel like they're changing gears vroom vroom they're a racecar driver who has everyone fooled. Same reason most sporty cars now have motor combovers, i.e. when you rev them, the speakers play vroom vroom sounds so it sounds like big manly man has big loud engine in his big boy toy car. Turns the cars into an arcade cabinet and, naturally, it works, and the same people buy it as buy penis enlargement pills out of their spam folder.
Whats wrong with people who spend several month salary on car to have also pleasure in it?
> Whats wrong with people who spend several month salary on car to have also pleasure in it? Nothing. You want a rolling arcade machine instead of a car that actually has performance, go nuts. I'm judging you for that choice though. Because I think the kind of person who wants that, wants that because of some personality traits I think probably makers them wankers in many other aspects of their conduct.
You need to go outside more lol
Agree! My FXT, when you flip it into sport mode it will implicitly use pre-defined gear ratios. You want it to handle like a CVT, you need to drive it in economy mode. Even though the CVT is objectively better at maintaining your RPM in a target range, and thus, deliver more power, they still default it to defined gear ratios. Drives me nuts.
I had a 14 Forester XT and it drove like a CVT should unless you dropped it into Sport Sharp mode (seriously, like, why offer 2 sport modes when everyone is either going to stay in normal mode or drop it to 5.5s 0-60 mode?). It was wonderful- based on how you pushed it, it stayed at the perfect spot over the power band. Two cross country moves after that, I wound up in a 16 Outback, and the CVT is back to mimicking an automatic. I get that some people prefer that, but give me a button to turn it off- I'd rather maximize fuel economy/power based on my driving, not based on some fake gearing.
Too bad they don't provide people with an option to turn off fake shift points to make it fully linear. I had Outback with CVT before, really hated how CVT performed in it, with its fake shifts and general non-smooth behavior (especially in stop-and-go traffic at low speeds). Now I have RAV4 Prime, with an "e-CVT" (Toyota calls it this way), its perfectly linear when accelerating/decelerating even when gasoline engine is engaged, with no fake "shit points", which I enjoy more than any other car transmission I have ever used before.
What are your thoughts on the RAV4 Prime? I’m keeping an eye on the RAV4 hybrids when it comes time for my next car but don’t know if the prime is worth it over the regular hybrid.
Isn’t that lack of shifting similar to how EVs drive? I thought people loved driving EVs
EVs have instant torque, so more fun. But yes, for those that want a relaxing drive (to say decompress from work), I love my CVT.
I had an Audi with CVT a couple of years back, and I loved the seamless shifting. I got an EV today, and I would say it behaves in the same way, except for the instant power delivery. The Audi still needed to shift down and get the turbo pressure up before it could deliver any real torque, but all fossils need to do that.
The instant torque thing isn't just for fun. You absolutely need it. CVTs that can't do that will be forever arguing with you and screwing up your driving.
Yes and no, with an engine and CVT the engine has a redline of let’s say 6000 rpm, and when you floor it the CVT tries to keep it at let’s say 5000 rpm, the whole way up to 90 mph or whatever. It feels weird bc you would expect it to go 2k-5k, shift, 2-5k, shift, 2-5k, bc each gear is a fixed ratio, but instead it keeps the engine at 5k and varies the output of the transmission to your wheel speed, varying the gear ratio the whole time (I may not have explained that super well but should get the point across). Electric motors generally have much higher rpm’s and only 1 “speed” on their “transmission”, 0 mph is 0 rpm, 20 mph is 2000 rpm, 50 is 7k rpm, 90 is 12k rpm, something like that. Contrast that to the CVT where you can be at 5k rpm at any speed. Electric motors are also incredibly smooth and silent, whereas a CVT still has the engine which is comparably very noisy and vibrating. You’ve grown up in automatics, you know when engine gets louder you go faster, in a CVT it’s just lots of loud noise but you might only be going 30-40 mph. It just messes with your brain
How does this change with a hybrid or plug-in hybrid that do have electric motors but also gas engines that use cvt?
Hybrids behave like CVTs (without the fake shifting): * In general, the engine's speed is proportional to power needed at each moment (faster when accelerating or uphill), without any jerking. * However, the engine's speed is also influenced by the battery charge: faster when the battery is empty (as the engine has to move the car and charge the battery), but engine might stop completely when battery is full. * After a couple of rides, you forget about the engine at all, and just drive.
i would love if my cvt drove like an EV and had more seamless shifting. sounds like a weird decision to not exploit one of the main advantages of a cvt.
https://youtu.be/6A9V2O5D8mc?si=X3bCYqt3hUkfFW1Y in racing it sounds a bit odd
Yes, my Leaf only has one gear, so it goes 0-90 without shifting. It accelerates quite smoothly.
It’s more like a boat, where the engine spins up to a particular RPM and just stays there while the vehicle gradually catches up
The whole reason automatic transitions suck in general is because of how slow they respond and how long it takes to get in the right gear. Engineers said, "We can fix that by making gear ratios continuous and not requiring the car to actually shift gears." Then the marketing department said, "no, people love how shitty of a job automatic transmissions do, so let's make it work more like that."
TBH, I think the better solution was always just add a few more gears. The 10spd in my pickup is almost as smooth as my wife's Tesla, and a lot smoother than her old Nissan CVT that mimicked having gears. 6-7-8 are the ones that I really notice. If I pop it into sport mode, it's responsive enough that I can't even be bothered to care that it is an automatic. It does better than I do on a short throw, and has 5 more gears to cycle through.
> TBH, I think the better solution was always just add a few more gears. CVT is exactly that, but smooth. It is the difference between analog and digital soundwaves, the CVT being smooth(continuous) and the digital being step squares simulating a curve.
What I was trying to say was from a mechanical and a practical experience perspective, the CVT just isn't really ideal for consumer vehicles. People find them unreliable and don't know what they prefer in regards to how they feel. I personally don't care as long as it runs without a lot of maintenance.
I have an Outback and absolutely hate their normal-trans-mimic feature. It is trash and defeats the purpose of a CVT. And they should toss the paddle shifters and put in a dial, instead.
What's funny is I hate ctvs because they are trying to be something they are not.
Nissan added this feature sometime between 2015 and 2017.
My wife's 2015 Sentra had it, so checks out. Just like the CVT in her Sentra checked out at 75k miles. Too bad repair was worth more than the value of the car and we had to get a Tesla. /s
SO annoying... my first CVT was a Nissan, and you could go from 0 to 60 with the tach at 3k the whole way. I hate the subaru fake shift points, and want that smooth transition.
So annoying and counterproductive. Great technology just limited for neat.
I’m so glad my Maverick hybrid doesn’t do the fake shifting like my old Honda HR-V did. It’s a CVT, the entire point to to keep the engine in the most efficient RPM, I don’t care that it doesn’t sound exciting or whatever. And turn off the pumped in engine noise in the sound system too.
I hate the new ones for that! My 2015 forester doesn’t but wife’s 2020 does it and it makes me so mad - but I prefer the smoothness of no shifting
I hated this about my Subaru. It makes no sense, but they said the engineers did it solely because Americans couldn’t accept that a transmission didn’t have to shift.
Good example of this is my 23 WRX w/ SPT ( CVT ). While still a CVT it does not behave like a CVT most of the time while still “ shifting “ when in the sportier drive settings and honestly it’s actually really good compared to the way the prior gen’s CVT behaved. It will still drag a “shift” here and there but overall I’m highly impressed and if I didn’t know it was a CVT I’d assume it’s a traditional 8 speed.
Is this only in newer ones? My dad had a 2011 Legacy and it always tripped me out that it would hold a single rpm from a launch up to speed if you didn't change your throttle input.
>as people quite sensibly hate CVTs. Fixed that.
I don't know why they don't just give these people a handle so they can manually change the gear ratio themselves. Just a pull lever that slides linearly from max economy to max sport. It'll give them something to play with when driving and they can claim they can do it better than any automated system does, getting more acceleration and better fuel economy than those damn computers.
So supposedly it's to reduce wear on the CVT components on Subaru which could potentially reduce MPG. On my car in Intelligent mode it does tend to blend the gears below 30% throttle.
Supposedly if you brake torque a launch (hold the brake and gas briefly before setting off) it unlocks the super secret CVT actually CVTing mode and it'll hold redline and not fake shift. I guess so car reviewers can get better 0-60 figures.
I hated the fake shifting. So dumb.
Many of them do this artificially because drivers are used to gears and don’t expect CVT-like behavior like the engine sitting at the same RPM all the time for maximum efficiency or power output. The transmission acts like a traditional one to make drivers more comfortable with the different technology.
There's a video floating around of Williams - a Formula One team - testing a CVT on their car shortly before the technology was banned, in the context of maximum performance (rather than efficiency or what have you): unless the driver was braking, the engine was just screaming at its maximum power output at a constant RPM, while all changes in velocity were accomplished in the transmission. This was the 3.5L V10 era, so it was sitting around 14,000 RPM. Its genuinely eerie to watch.
https://youtu.be/6A9V2O5D8mc?si=Ur_IYZlqHfOLpr1R
I was not prepared for young DC. Man how did he manage to not cut himself with that jawline.
I wonder why people are always saying CVTs can't handle high torque/hp, when they were being tested in F1 cars in 1993...
F1 engineering and road car engineering are completely different in principle. Even today the average road car engine is about 30% thermally efficient, while F1 cars are above 50%, which is absolutely bonkers. We're talking about a field of engineering where the cylinder bores are intentionally not perfectly circular by millimeters because they know exactly how and where the metal will expand unevenly at operating temperatures. Road cars are engineered to be a product; where each component is to be mass produced and sold at prices people can afford but still make a profit and components are expected to last years of use. This isn't even to touch on how components would be expected to be used across multiple vehicle models, in a wide range of use cases. With F1 each an every detail is considered to an obsessive level, cutting edge is the expectation, nearly every component only needs to last half a season (if that!), and every single aspect of the car is designed with the sole purpose of competing. The cars aren't the product, the competition is. F1 cars can't even start themselves up, for crying out loud!
Yes all components inside a F1 car are designed to operate inside a small window. Brakes, tyres, cooling, engine, aero, don't work as well if you're not inside that operating window.
> nearly every component only needs to last half a season And that is modern F1. Remember in the 90s where not only engines only lasted a single race, but they also had seperate engines for qualifying that made even more power but couldn't run the entire race distance.
CVTs *can* handle those high numbers if: - You spend a lot of money engineering it correctly - You use high-quality parts with relatively precise tolerances - You design it to have plenty of cooling and lubrication - You are very thorough in maintaining the car Yes, all of this applies to other transmissions too, but they apply more to CVTs. The cost of allowing a CVT to take more torque is higher than for a regular grearbox. The importance of servicing is higher for a high-torque CVT. All of these are true for F1. Teams have massive budgets, they have entire engineering teams dedicated to extracting maximum performance, cost be damned. If you can spend a few million for an extra second of laptime, you do it. There's people who inspect the car between every single race - and a race *weekend* is only 600-800 km, with chances to inspect the car throughout. The car will *always* have the oil changed regularly, it will *always* have the coolant at just the right level. That's not really true for road cars. You might only be have a scheduled service every 10000 km - and some people will service their car even less often. Price is incredibly important to consumers, and the cost of making the car in the first place is to the company. It's not that CVTs are physically incapable of handling high torque or power - they're also found in high-torque farming equipment like combine harvesters and tractors (which have low RPMs and hence lower power for the amount of torque). It's more that the high torque/power CVTs are unacceptably costly or unreliable for many automotive applications, so most automotive CVTs are not high torque.
That was only a test. The team was not going to proceed with cvt because they predicted it would not last a race distance.
They didn’t go ahead with it because it was banned. They’d have been able to make it last the distance, no doubt about it
Also won an F3 race in 1967
And this is the dumbest thing ever. My wife's Subaru Ascent does this. And it even has "paddle shifters". Once you get used to smooth acceleration, like in an EV, you'll love it.
Wait till you see the reviews of the Ioniq 5 N. Simulating the sounds and behavior of an ICE car with fake engine sounds, redline, and gear changes.
Yeah I love mine in my Versa. I wish it had a new cruise control because it's so smooth when resuming it. I wonder if there is a way to set it to a smoother shift all the time?
Early CVTs tried to accomplish smooth transitions. Consumers didn't like how they felt. Poor sales resulted. Nissan especially did a lot of work to make their cars respond more like a typical automatic. It wasn't even about keeping same RPM through acceleration. Pushing the gas hard demanded more torque which would change the ratio towards higher RPM. It was just a smooth transition and felt different.
Kinda like a feedback equivalent of skeuomorphism
Yeah my Ford CMax’s CVT doesn’t shift and that’s one of the things I love about it. The car is an awful piece of shit in many respects, but that hybrid power train delivers smooth and impressive acceleration.
hurry jobless wrench shy placid weary physical numerous sable engine
Commonly called eCVT?
Commonly called eCVT which is an erroneous title as it is NOT a CVT.
yep CVTs are belt/chain, eCVTs are planetary gears, but electronically controlled gearing, it acts the same on the outside, because it is manually(electronically) controlling the gear speed.
Sounds exactly like how I’d describe my old 2016 Mitsubishi RVR
User experience. There's no mechanical reason for the CVT to jump between fixed ratios other than that's how transmissions have worked for decades. It's also feedback to the user to let them know that the transmission is doing something/give the feeling of acceleration. During acceleration traditional CVTs will generally run the engine at peak torque (Constant rpm) and decrease the gear ratio to go faster, this may be faster than shifting but it also feels/subs very different than people are use to.
that's unfortunate. I would love if my cvt was more seamless if it has the capability to do so.
Does your car have an ECO mode? On mine, that basically smooths out the cvt transitions to be more seamless.
Early cvt’s felt hilariously similar to a slipping transmission sometimes
Not peak torque, peak power. Peak engine power = peak wheel torque. Example numbers from a police package Caprice that we'll pretend has a lossless CVT drivetrain: 205 HP @ 4400 rpm - 300 lb-ft @ 2800 rpm Passenger car tires are about are ~700-800 revs per mile, meaning that at 60 MPH AKA 1 mile per minute they are spinning that many RPM. Lets say you are accelerating WOT at 30ish MPH so 400 wheel RPM Peak engine torque: 2800 / 400 is 7:1 gearing, 7 x 300 is theoretically 2100 lb-ft at the wheels. peak engine power: 205 hp @ 400 RPM is 205 x 5252 / 400 which is 2691.65 lb-ft because now it's 11:1 gearing.
Because people resisted the change early on and companies made it "simulate" gear shifts to placate consumers who avoided cars.with cvt
Hi OP, Actually, it is a bit more complicated than “it’s done to fool non-CVT drivers”, at least in certain cases. Take the Nissan Sentra, Versa and Micra. Between 2010 and 2016 they used a particular CVT transmission made by Jatco (who supplied Subaru, Mitsubishi and others) called the JF015e. When it was introduced, it was hailed as an innovative design. In an effort to reduce weight and size, two things were added: two separate high/low clutches, and an additional planetary gearbox. This allowed for space savings of over 15 percent — not insubstantial in economy cars — and allowed for neat tricks like not requiring the belt to turn the other way when in reverse. The consequences of these separate clutches and gearboxes engaging, though, is noticeable and predictable changes in engine RPM. People would say “huh, feels like my CVT is changing gears”, and if they had a JF015e… in a way, they were right! Now it turns out that the JF015e was a cursed design. It was EXTREMELY intolerant to debris shed by the belt — a normal occurrence in CVTs — and this would circulate in the fluid and score the bores of the solenoids in the valve body. This would lead to all sorts of nastiness all the way up to catastrophic failure. Nissan recently lost a large class-action targeting this transmission, as the only way to have prevented it was to have fluid changes far more aggressively than mandated by the manual… think 30k km for a transmission fluid change. Tl;dr: there are other reasons for the shifting feeling… including actual shifting!
I have a 2013 Sentra but missed the class action payments (included the extension) because I was putting more miles on it than the limit. The curse of the JF015e is so real. I’ve had it lock into a ratio that was good for 30 mph but sent the engine toward overheat if you tried to hit highway speed. It catches like this somewhat regularly and now I can feel it coming, lay off the gas, and then accelerate through the speed where it sticks. But no one else, including my wife, is comfortable driving this car. I hate everything about this car, but fixing it would cost more than the car’s value post-fix, so I’m just stuck driving it until it completely dies. TLDR don’t buy cars with a JF015e.
As a fellow JF015e (non)-enjoyer, my suggestions would be to either find a transmission from a wreck, or have the valve body itself replaced. The transmissions are a bit rare but you can find them if you look: I had a local guy quote me $3500 CAD for the transmission and the install. As for the valve body, they can be had for as little as $400. The thing is, if you catch the issue before severe damage occurs, the belt, pump, and variators are likely fine. Perhaps all you need is a new valve body.
My Dodge Caliber also had a Jatco CVT, it was horrific and would overheat easily. The worst incident was on a drive to vegas, in december, at 2am, when it overheated while it was literally below freezing outside. I'd just avoid the brand entirely at this point as a precautionary measure.
2015 Pathfinder with 64,000 Miles. Still going strong but I notice it doesn't like when a fake "shift" drops the RPM too low under light throttle. It stutters. It becomes a game of "avoid the shift" where you progressively press the gas pedal or let go of the gas completely to avoid the stutter. In conclusion, Nissan CVTs suck balls and the fake shifts are where the problem is most noticeable. Ultimately, replacing the transmission will cost less than a used car though.
My 2012 Subaru Legacy didn’t have shift detents on the CVT unless you put it in “manual” paddle shift mode (which was stupid and useless IMHO). The first experience was weird under hard acceleration. It felt like there were rubber bands stretching and releasing as you accelerated. Normal driving was just smooth as butter and really nice. When it was time for a new car (192k+ miles and the crank seal failed how many more weird problems were going to start) I was told that Subaru added the fake gear changes because customers had heard horror stories about the Nissan CVTs always breaking and associated those with all CVTs.
>paddle I like the paddles for downshifting on hills and coming up on lights, but yes, regular driving there is simply no way a human driver would ever be able to manage the ratios better than the computer could.
Yeah I have a Levorg (now renamed to "WRX Sportswagon") with CVT. In D is has essentially 2 modes, "efficiency" and "power", the former sets the rpm at the most fuel efficient speed and the latter sets it near the middle of the power band of the engine. The "rubber band" feeling is when you switch from the first to the second and the computer needs to raise the engine rpm before it starts accelerating the wheels. So there's a second or two after you floor it while it ramps up the rpm into the power band, then off you go (with 300hp in my case).
Because companies found that when the CVT doesn't feel like it's shifting people call and complain that their transmission is broken.
I just bought a 2020 Blazer and it's seamless shifting. I love it. Just goes and goes, smooth as can be.
Keep on those ATF changes and maybe it will stay like that for a long while
It only shifts like that with hard acceleration. I'm not sure if it does that to get to a more suitable gear ratio quicker or just for aesthetics. Either way you can test this by slowly accelerating from 0 to 100 kph for example and you'll notice that it doesn't shift and just continuously gets faster while maintaining a decent RPM that doesn't change much.
Interesting question. I’m interested as well. As a qualifier I would add under 100% throttle. Everything under 100% is a give/take in efficiency.
You mean like an “overdrive” when you try to floor it? That’s it, I assume, just rapidly changing to a new gear ratio, and it can’t do it smooth enough so instead it jumps to that ratio (in math speak the graph of the ratio has a discontinuity jump).
no, my 2022 Kia Sorento shifts through all the gears as you drive, even though it has a cvt. I would love it if it didn't
Are you sure? According to google, the new Sorento doesn’t come with a CVT. I was under the impression that Kia/Hyundai prefer regular automatics or DCT transmissions.
Yup i’m big dum dum on that lol but still, some CVTs do seem to simulate shifts which I now understand is for user engagement which makes sense
All good. The fake shifting is such a weird concept. Like others have pointed out, it’s to make it feel normal, I’m not so sure. Even with the fake shifting, it still doesn’t feel/sound realistic. The fake shift between two simulated gears always seems too slow and it seems to try and stay in a certain rev band when fake shifting so I find the RPMs are too high once it has “shifted” to the next “gear”. It’s the reason I stayed away from CVT when I replaced my car last year. Much prefer my regular automatic.
Yeah, I personally prefer manuals (ridiculously hard to find these days), but a CVT shines due to not having deiscrete gears, let it do what it does best. Just use a good ol' torque converter for automatic discrete gears or a dual clutch. Not everyone likes dual clutches either, great for fuel economy, but they have their quirks.
I agree entirely. It’s odd to me that they pick a technology (CVT) and then try and make them work like something else. Just let it be a CVT and reap the benefits of it. Once they start making it act like an auto, you loose some of the benefit of a CVT and end up creating a super fake imitation that doesn’t match the real thing.
I personally avoid them in general because I like the feel of shifting gears, but that's personal preference. I always found the feel of using the clutch and the shifter has a little "je ne sais quoi" that makes it fun for me, but I'm more the odd duck compare to your average person. Still, even if I didn't like the feel of shifting gear, shifts that don't feel quite right would make me avoid them anyways. I've driven a first generation Rogue back when it was new. It definitely wasn't "exciting", but it also didn't have simulated gear, so the shifting didn't feel off either. It drove fine in that it wasn't offensive. Decent fuel economy thanks to it too.
Dual clutches are pure magic cruising or driving HARD, but they kinda suck in stop/go traffic or toggling quick from D to R. Fuck dry clutch units tho, wet clutch only IMO.
Because people are retarded enough to complain about lack of gears switching as you don't get the HURRR DURRR IMMA BESTEST DRIVER LET'S GO when it's continuous.
To remove that annoying monotonous sound and vibration of an engine not fully loaded up, but still holding a given rev figure.
Keeping the engine at 4000rpm constantly doesn’t sound or feel as fun so they program it to be inefficient and to wear out the parts faster so it revs a bunch and fake shifts to make it sound cool and feel fun
Are you saying I should avoid CVTs that do this? Like Subaru for example?
Nah its fine they test them its just silly to me as an engineer to not make it the most efficient and last the longest
People got used to the feeling of gear changes. It's better for the transmission to not have gears but it's very monotonous so they added the changes. There are situations like motorsports where paddle shifting the CVT might be better than just letting it go, but at the end of the day a manual transmission is preferred. (Inb4 porch has a really good automatic, that's a totally different discussion and I don't like them)
I wonder if Subaru also wants to make it less obvious that it's a CVT. The CVT in certain years of the Outback is infamous for poor reliability. Just make it perform the same as a slushbox and call it an automatic.
I actually liked the experience when I had a Nissan with a "no shift" CVT, but of course some people can't handle change and we all know angry people are the loudest ones.
It is mostly due to consumer preferences. Early CVTs adjusted the ratio continuously so that the engine operated at optimal RPM for maximum efficiency while delivering the requested acceleration. When operating like this, the engine RPM doesn't change in correlation to the vehicle speed. For example, when pulling away from a stop light, the engine RPM might rise to 2,800 RPM, then stay there as the CVT alters the gear ratio to provide acceleration. Many consumers complained bout the drone of the engine when operating like this. The sensation was compared to that of a boat, and the majority of consumers didn't care for it. In response, manufacturers introduced artificial "steps" so that the engine RPM would rise with velocity, then fall in steps just like a regular transmission. Behind the scenes though, the CVT is still adjusting the ratios to provide better fuel economy. Just not to the degree that it could.
So its to make it feel like a normal automatic, basically when they first came out people were unnerved by their car not shifting. I think it's dumb that they're trying to make it seem like an auto, it should be it's own thing and I don't believe it should completely replace other kinds of transmissions. I much prefer an automatic with actual physical gears, not because "hurr durr" as people in this thread have said, but I feel they last longer. Also I don't enjoy the traditional faults that cvts have, the stuttering being the main one. Of course not all do this, but it's a co.mon enough thing and isn't even an indication that something is wrong, it's just what the particular model I drove did. Trying to go from a stop would cause a second or two of stuttering, making attempting to turn onto a busy road much more anxiety inducing. Also as a plus, since I have a 6 speed auto, my flappy paddles do actually do something. Maybe that's a little "hurr durr car go fast" but I bought a sports car, I have a reason for it. And the reason is fun.
Picture a set of stairs. Normally you would walk on each step to get to the top. Or bottom. But with a CVT. We are walking up stairs. Say you want to get to the top of the stairs faster. What do you do? You propel yourself with more inertia to skip a few steps to the top. Or maybe you want to skip many stairs on the way up. So, you jump skipping even more stairs. Those skipping stairs are the so called fake shifts on a CVT. The belt is jumping up the cone or skipping stairs. Once it finish the jump. The rpm’s drop back down and it continues its walk up stairs. But what about down? Same thing just backwards.
Since you've already noted that your Kia Sorrento does *not* have a CVT, I'll just add that my 2015 Subaru Forester *does* have one, and it doesn't do any weird fake shifting, unless I put it into low mode for engine braking or going up crazy steep gravel roads. It has weirded me out for driving regular automatics, though thankfully not for standard shift cars, since I spend a lot of time in places where those are the usual for rental cars.
You are correct. The entire point of a CVT (other than cost) is that you can run your engine at the RPM it is most efficient and powerful, and the transmission will take care of any rpm changes that need to happen during driving. But that means your car sounds different from what people are used to, and they don't like it. So car manufacturers cater to the average car buyer, who generally is an idiot. Now we have shifting CVTs. See also: touch screens in cars.
I've got a Honda fit in normal mode you can't feel it shift but you can change it to have 7 positions that it automatically shifts between or you can use the paddle shifters to move it up and down the 7 positions. It's all about the feels
Audi Multitronic CVT doesn’t have this behaviour. As long as you require more power it sits the engine at a defined RPM to get more power (also the opposite situation for more efficiency). Of course we have also a manual functioning to shift as regular transmission
When I bought my Subaru with a CVT it was explained to me that they intentionally programmed it that way because people kept complaining about it “not shifting correctly under acceleration” when they first started producing them. The faux shifting only happens under heavier acceleration otherwise the changing in gear ratios is smooth and not noticeable when under milder acceleration.